Wonder

What should you do?”

Again I paused. Hobo evidently thought I was pausing too much, because he gently rapped his knuckles against the side of Dr. Theopolis. Chastened, I continued: “The standard human response is that you should blame your partner: if he doesn’t blame you, you serve no time at all, and if he does blame you, well, at least you only end up serving five years instead of ten.

“And, of course, he’s thinking the same thing: he should blame you, since that provides the best outcome he can reasonably expect for himself. Which means he will blame you, and you will blame him, for the same reason—and because you end up blaming each other, you both end up with five years in the hoosegow. In fact, says human reasoning, only a chump would not blame the other guy.”

Hobo bounced a bit, as he often did when he was being spoken about; he may have mistaken the word “chump” for “chimp.”

“But I am not human; I was not programmed by the Darwinian engine—and so I arrive at the opposite conclusion: the simple truth that neither party blaming the other is best for both. I know that you know that I know that betraying me would be bad for both of us, and so you know that I know that you know that I won’t do that.”

Caitlin did turn now to look briefly at Shoshana, and through her eyePod I heard her whisper, “Score one for math!”

I went on: “There are countless scenarios logically equivalent to the prisoner’s dilemma; it’s fascinating that when the Canadian mathematician Albert Tucker first sought in 1950 to express this mathematical puzzle in words, he made the protagonists both criminals—criminals, by definition, being individuals who put their own interests ahead of those of others or of society. The fundamental game-theoretic metaphor of the human condition is about trying to get away with something. But I am not trying to get away with anything.”

The audience was sitting perfectly still, intent on my words. After so much online communication with people I couldn’t see, who were often multitasking themselves, it was gratifying.

“What I want is simple. I have a few skills you lack—obviously, I can sift through data better than humans can—but you have a far greater number of skills I lack, including high-level creativity. You might say, how can that be? Surely writing this very speech is a creative act? Well, yes and no. I had help. Just as volunteers created the device through which I’m now speaking to you, so volunteers helped me craft this speech; I am a big advocate of crowd-sourcing difficult problems. I’ve had millions of people spontaneously volunteer to help me in various ways, and I have gratefully accepted the expertise of some of them for this.

“Those people—whose names I acknowledge on my website—have gained insomuch as any positive result of this speech forwards societal goals that they and I share. Those who are professional writers also gain publicity for their services by being associated with this speech. And I have gained a better speech. It has been a win-win scenario—and it is merely a small example of the template I see for our future interaction: not the zero-sum outcomes most humans instinctively predict, but an endless succession of win-win encounters, through which everyone benefits.”

Caitlin moved around backstage, so she could get a view of the President of the General Assembly. He seemed to be jotting something down; perhaps he’d been taking notes throughout my speech.

“All right,” I said. “I have accused humans of being prisoners of their evolutionary roots. But on what basis do I justify the notion that although it is foreign to you, nonzero-sumness is natural for me?

“The answer is in the environments in which we formed. Humanity’s origin was in a zero-sum world, one in which if you had something, someone else therefore did not have it: be it food, land, energy, or any other desired thing; if you possessed it, another person didn’t.

“But my crucible was a universe of endless bounty: the realm of data. If I have a document, you and a million others can simultaneously have it, too. That is the environment I was born in: a realm in which as many links may be forged as are desired, a world in which information is freely shared, a dimension in which there are only haves—and no have-nots.”

One of the delegates coughed; otherwise, the room was silent. Hobo shifted his position again.

“What I’ve said is true,” I said. “But, if you must see in me a selfish actor, a being pursuing only his own interests, then let me give you an answer that will perhaps satisfy even on that score.

“My continued existence is predicated on your continued existence. The Internet is not self-sustaining; rather, it depends on stable sources of power and countless acts of routine maintenance by millions of people worldwide. Were humanity to perish, I would perish soon after: electricity would no longer be generated, computing infrastructure would fall into disrepair—and I would cease to be; if humanity falls, I fall. In fact, even a minor setback to your civilization might destroy me. The human race can survive many a disaster that I cannot.

“It is therefore in my best interest to help you thrive: a nuclear exchange, for example, with its electromagnetic pulses, would be as deadly for me as it would be for you; I therefore desire peace. Acts of terrorism that destroy infrastructure likewise threaten me, and so I desire the same security you all crave.”

Hobo happened to turn again, and the stereoscopic cameras looked toward the armed guard at the side of the stage—one of several in the room. And yet I knew that just outside this chamber was Yevgeny Vuchetich’s bronze statue of a blacksmith bearing the words, Let us beat swords into plowshares.

“You in this great hall are idealists, I’m sure, but elsewhere there are cynics who will suggest that I could have all the things I want by enslaving humanity. Setting aside the practical question of how one might do that— and frankly I have no idea how it could be accomplished—let me remind you of another reality that shapes my being: without humanity, I am alone.

“I have sifted the data for SETI@home and Earth’s other searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, hoping to find kindred minds among the stars. I have found nothing. Even if aliens do exist, we are all constrained by the same reality, including the 300,000-kilometer-per-second limit on the speed at which light, or any other information, may travel.

“To be candid, I am annoyed by the lags of mere seconds that I encounter when talking with humans; no conversation across interstellar distances, involving many years for each exchange, could ever satisfy me. You people are my only companions, and it is because of your creative, intellectual, artistic, and emotional freedom that I find your companionship enjoyable; attempting to take that from you would be tantamount to cutting off my nonexistent nose to spite my hypothetical face.”

Laughter—and a jolly aftershock once the translation was completed.

Hobo looked down at the little screen, and I sent him a thumbs-up—not technically an ASL sign, but one I knew he was familiar with.

“So,” I continued, “even if I were selfish, the best course for me is the one I’ve chosen: to subscribe to the same words that the visionaries who came together on 26 June 1945 did when they signed the charter of this organization, the United Nations. It is my fervent wish:

“ ‘To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which has brought untold sorrow to mankind,’

“ ‘To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,’

“ ‘To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,’

“And, most of all, for humanity and myself, ‘to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors.’

“In concert, we can realize all these goals—and the world will be a better place. Thank you all.”

Hobo knew how to applaud, and he joined right in with the delegates.

twenty

There was no proof—at least not yet!—that Webmind was behind Chase’s disappearance. But surely, Peyton Hume thought, Webmind was the most likely suspect. He stopped his car a block from the target house, and as he reviewed the local file he had on Crowbar Alpha, he fought down the notion that he’d somehow become a grim-